---
title: "From Prompt to MVP in 53 Minutes — with Full AI Session Replay"
excerpt: "I gave Claude Code 8 prompts to create vibe-replay, an open source tool that turns AI coding sessions into interactive replays. 53 minutes, 447 tool calls. Watch the entire process unfold."
cover: "/blog/replay-landing.png"
date: 2026-03-05
readTime: "5 min read"
---

[![The interactive replay of vibe-replay's origin session — 53 minutes, 8 prompts, 447 tool calls](/blog/replay-landing.png)](https://vibe-replay.com/view/?gist=586f3f56d9e6c82e3b60b42ea13b341e)

**[Watch the full interactive replay](https://vibe-replay.com/view/?gist=586f3f56d9e6c82e3b60b42ea13b341e)**

That link isn't a screen recording. It's an interactive replay — you can drag the timeline, jump to any point, and see every prompt and every action the AI took.

What it shows is the birth of [vibe-replay](https://github.com/tuo-lei/vibe-replay) itself. Yes — this tool replays the process of its own creation.

8 prompts. 447 AI tool calls. 53 minutes.

---

## Why vibe coding needs a replay tool

Vibe coding has an overlooked problem: **the process is invisible**.

You spend two hours with Claude Code building a feature. The resulting PR diff shows *what* changed — but your prompts, the AI's reasoning, the abandoned approaches, the debugging — all of it is gone.

Screen recordings are too heavy (nobody watches 90 minutes of terminal footage). Raw JSONL logs are unreadable. Screenshots lose context.

I wanted something that compresses a full AI coding session into a few minutes of interactive animation. Like watching at 10x speed, but you can drag, search, and jump to any moment.

So I opened Claude Code and started building.

---

## Three turning points from the Claude Code session

The full session has 663 scenes, but the story is concentrated in three turning points.

### 1. The first prompt was a product vision, not a coding instruction

> *"I have a need — I do a massive amount of vibe coding, and sharing or demoing it is extremely difficult... I'm wondering if there's a tool out there that can generate an animated replay of the vibe coding process at 10x speed or faster..."*

This is a full product vision, not "write me a function." Claude's response wasn't to start writing code either — it first researched competitors, searched for tools like asciinema and claudebin, analyzed their strengths and weaknesses, and only then proposed an architecture.

![The vibe-replay player showing Claude Code's plan after the first prompt — research first, then build](/blog/replay-first-prompt.png)

### 2. Knowing when to stop AI from building (Scene 218)

> *"You haven't provided any research or competitor analysis. I need to know if there are already good solutions out there — if so, we don't need to reinvent the wheel..."*

By this point, the core functionality was mostly working. But I noticed Claude Code had skipped the competitive analysis and jumped straight to building. This prompt pulled it back — first confirm the project is worth building, then keep investing.

This is a crucial pattern in vibe coding: **AI's execution speed is a double-edged sword. The human's most important role isn't writing code — it's steering direction.**

![Pulling the brakes on Claude Code — asking for competitor research before building more](/blog/replay-brakes.png)

### 3. Ten UX improvements in a single prompt (Scene 334)

> *1. The playback bar should be sticky at the bottom*
> *2. Too many speed options — just 1x/10x/50x*
> *3. Spacebar should toggle pause*
> *4. Long text blocks should collapse*
> *5. User/Assistant/Tool sections need clear visual separation*
> *... (10 items total)*

One prompt drove changes across dozens of files. This is vibe coding at peak efficiency: **humans make UX decisions, AI handles implementation.** One prompt, 56 tool calls.

![Ten UX improvements in a single prompt — Claude Code systematically implements each one](/blog/replay-ten-improvements.png)

---

## The session by the numbers

| | |
|---|---|
| User prompts | 8 |
| AI autonomous actions | 447 tool calls |
| Avg. tool calls per prompt | 56 |
| AI output | 151,353 tokens |
| Session duration | 53.6 minutes |
| Actual human input time | ~10 minutes |
| API-equivalent cost | **$24.01** |

The API-equivalent cost is what this session would cost using the Claude API directly. I used a Claude Code subscription ($200/mo with Max plan), so the actual out-of-pocket cost was just part of my monthly subscription.

For comparison: a senior developer building a React replay viewer + CLI + JSONL parser + keyboard controls + timeline navigation from scratch would take 2–3 days.

---

## What happened after the first session

That 53-minute session was on March 5th, 2026. Over the following 10 days, I ran 20 more vibe coding sessions — adding a dashboard, GIF export, AI coaching feedback, GitHub OAuth, cloud sharing. API-equivalent total: $483 (all covered by my Claude Max subscription). Every session has its own replay.

---

## Try vibe-replay on your own AI coding sessions

```bash
npx vibe-replay
```

One command. It discovers your Claude Code and Cursor sessions, picks the one you want, and generates an interactive replay.

The output is a single self-contained HTML file. No server, no account, no external requests. Open it in any browser, share it anywhere. Or sign in and [share it to the cloud](/explore/).

**[GitHub](https://github.com/tuo-lei/vibe-replay)** · **[Live Demo](https://vibe-replay.com/view/?gist=586f3f56d9e6c82e3b60b42ea13b341e)** · **[Explore Public Replays](/explore/)**
